I didn’t realize until I went to put together a blog post that our weekend was so full. But that’s probably because I’m generally confused about what day it is and don’t always realize we’ve hit the weekend.
We spent Friday afternoon at the boys’ piano recital. I was a bit nervous because last year, Adam cried and pitched a fit and refused to play. This year, the crowd would be twice as big. He seemed fine about it, though, even cheerful. And he happily played his two pieces, his sweet little feet dangling off the piano bench in rhythm to his song. Such a difference a year makes!
What? Oh, stop it, I didn’t cry. I simply had damp oculars. I’m sure it was allergies.
We celebrated the event with popsicles and take-out dinner eaten on our patio. When I was a kid, my mom always wanted to eat outside and I never understood why when there was perfectly good air conditioning inside that door. But now I know: she didn’t want to clean up the floors after I ate.
Which is why this little moment made me particularly happy. Because at the end of a long week, we would throw all the plates in the trash and leave the crumbs to the critters who roam at night.
On Saturday, we had Yard Work to do. With capital letters. Since Andrew chopped down a bunch of trees, we discovered that the difficulty doesn’t lie in knocking trees down, it’s what to do with them after. We now have more firewood than we could ever possibly use in five years and there are still 4 trees that need dissecting. Meanwhile, our yard is littered with sticks and stumps and sawdust, oh my!
So we tackled the sticks. The kids and I hauled a brush pile from one part of the yard to another part of the yard, which seems a little pointless unless you understand that the county law prohibits us from burning a brush pile until October and I wasn’t particularly pleased with the location of said brush pile and didn’t want to stare at it until fall.
So we moved it to another location where Andrew broke the limbs down into something that we can burn in our fire pit. And even if we eat roasted hot dogs and marshmallows every night this summer, we will still never burn all those branches.
Anyway, it would have helped if I had some sort of picture documentation so you could at least see a before and after, but I was too busy playing a giant game of Pick-Up Sticks.
At the end of the day, my back gave out and I spent the evening on some mighty fine pain-killers.
Mother’s Day morning, I got to sleep in, which was handy since I needed to sleep off the muscle relaxers. Only my back was no less angry, so I stayed in bed most of the day and, gasp, read a book! I also read to the kids, which is why the reading selection on my bed looked like this:
I told Andrew the one thing I wanted for Mother’s day was to be completely free of responsibility for meals. I did not want to think about the question, “What are we gonna eat?”
Best. Present. Ever.
Andrew stepped up to the plate and hit a home run with homemade donuts for breakfast, a spinach salad with bacon vinaigrette for lunch, and Five Guys for dinner. And since he threw a salad in the mix, the other two meals don’t count, right?
We are home from church now and Andrew is whisking up the best chocolate mousse ever. I’ll show you how to make it soon. But first, I’m gonna eat some in the name of “research.”
I so enjoyed my people this weekend. They make every day, whether we’re schooling, celebrating, yard working, or eating, such an adventure.
I’d also like to take a minute to recognize this man, without whom I would never have received the title: Mother. Thanks for the Mother’s Day of my dreams, babe.
Finally, Happy Mother’s Day to women everywhere, because no matter where or who we are, we will always find somebody to nurture.
And glory to Him who sets the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:6)
